Low Minimum Wage is
Bad for Women, Families and Business
By Sherry Stewart Deutschmann, American Forum
By Sherry Stewart Deutschmann, American Forum
 |
| By Barry Deutsch. For more of his cartoons, click here |
It's just not logical to
pay people a wage that doesn't even cover basics like food, housing, utilities
and transportation needed to get to work.
At $7.25 an hour, the
minimum wage comes to just $15,080 a year for full-time employees. Think about
cashiers or health aides, childcare workers or fast food servers trying to make
ends meet on $15,080.
How can you keep people
fully engaged in the success of your business when they are distracted with
worry about how they are going to pay rent or keep the lights on? How can they
provide the best customer service when they are struggling to feed their
family?
I know firsthand, you
don't need to pay poverty wages to succeed. In fact, paying higher wages is
truly beneficial for business.
I know we would not have
had this success if we paid minimum wage. Paying better wages has helped our
bottom line, not hurt it.
My company has been
successful because of our employee-centric culture. We believe that if we take
good care of our employees, they will in turn take great care of the customer.
It works.
Our starting pay is $12
an hour, not $7.25. And we increase wages by an average of 20 percent as soon
as the probationary period is over. We also pay 100 percent of our employees'
medical, dental, disability and life insurance. We give them 10 percent of our
profits monthly, distributed evenly regardless of job or title.
We help them
buy their first homes with grants toward down-payments. We allow them to bring
their children to work when they need to. We reimburse tuition. And these arent
all of our employee benefits.
It's very good for our
business. We can count on dedicated employees and higher productivity and
morale. We save money with lower turnover and training costs and reduced
mistakes. We have better customer service and satisfaction.
We don't count on other
businesses and taxpayers to subsidize our profits by underwriting food stamps
and other safety net assistance for our employees.
Why should I be
subsidizing the profits of companies that pay wages their employees cant live
on?
When I pay a starting
wage of $12 plus benefit my employees have more money to spend at other
businesses.
The very least other
businesses can do is pay a wage that allows their employees to afford the
basics.
But today's minimum wage
locks workers into a nightmare of poverty. It isn't a building block of the
American Dream. Adjusted for inflation, the current minimum wage of $7.25 is
worth less than it was in the 1950s.
The typical minimum wage
worker is an adult woman. As Margot Dorfman, CEO of the U.S. Women's Chamber of
Commerce, has said, "Keeping the minimum wage low keeps women and families
down."
Last increased in 2009
to the inadequate level of $7.25, the minimum wage is overdue for a raise.
The proposal to increase
the minimum wage in three annual steps to $10.10, and then adjust it yearly
after that for the rising cost of living is very reasonable.
After all, the minimum
wage would already be over $10 now if it had kept up with the cost of living
since the 1960s.
Today, women own 30
percent of American businesses. The success of my company -- and my personal
success -- is proof that the American Dream is still possible. But it's a
possibility built on fair wages -- not poverty wages.
Public opinion polls
show that across the political spectrum, Americans want to raise the minimum
wage. President Obama, many members of Congress and many business owners want
to "Give America a raise." Let's make 2014 the year we get it done.
Deutschmann
is the founder and CEO of LetterLogic in Nashville.